Early in 1973, Giorgio Gomelsky, one time manager / producer / artistic director of a crucial chunk of the British rock-scene, at the time performing the same pioneering service for France, fixed me with a piercing gaze and growled: "It is impossible to understand the French scene without first understanding May '68". Which is to say that Revolutionary Socialism was even more dominant in shaping the development of rock in France than it was in Germany. In the early seventies, the French gig circuit was as lacking in centralization and co-ordination as the German one was. Although managers were perfectly legal in France, the growth of the rock scene had been actively thwarted by the legislation of Pompidou's government, and most bands found themselves arranging their own venues and publicity from day to day.
There were two main reasons for this:
First, the failure of Andre Mairaux's "Maisons de Culture" programme to provide facilities for the young audience.
Second, the fact that the government only ever granted licences for fifteen agencies, all of which were controlled by half-a-dozen bourgeois concerns. More than half of the official venues and promotional machinery in the country were in the hands of a single middle-class business run by the powerful Marouani family. With the establishment having an unbreakable grip on the status quo of French entertainment, the only choice for musicians not willing to sacrifice their scruples and play the "bals" (Discotheques) for "les minets" (teenyboppers) seemed to be to set up an alternative underground circuit which is where Gomelsky's interest in France comes in.
With Bob Benamou, manager of the countries number two group, GONG, Gomeisky opened up a "parallel" circuit of nearly 300 small capacity (2400) gigs, thirty of them in Paris alone, co-ordinated from an unofficial agency run jointly by both men. A band playing this circuit had to work pretty hard (at least twenty gigs a month, every month), but, with a guaranteed minimum of 1500 francs per venue, they were supposedly certain of a measure of financial security. The two best known groups in the country were Gong and Magma (a very freaky ensemble - the most powerful and individual group France has yet produced).
Gong - a congregation of various nationalities and states of mind which occupied the position of Favourite Head Band for France in the same way that Amon Duul II did for Germany, and Hawkwind for England. Their 'Radio Gnome' album demonstrated them to be by far the best of this trio. Behind Allen's band lay a whimsical mythology based on "les emissions de la planète Gong", vaguely identified with Selene (Goddess Of The Moon) and the Female Principle. Their close friends and touring partners, Magma, likewise have a planetary mythology centring on the Nitzschean world of Kobala and the Masculine Principle; they therefore produced virile, rather fascistic music which was one third propaganda, one third posturing, and one third scintillating jazz rock of a unique intensity.
In their first three years, led by Christian Vander (who was tutored by Elvin Jones) they released two albums in France, the first of which was reviewed in New Musical Express (December 30, 1972), the second, '1001 Degrees Centigrades' (the temperature, according to Magma, at which the universe melts), winning the Grand Prix Du Disque in its class for 1972. Neither record can fairly be said to be a success, despite the rapturous approval of French audiences: the Kobaïan mythology is too intrusive and, on '1001', it stultifies the music to a point where it becomes conceptually brilliant but intolerable to listen to. Vander, pianist François Cahen, and superb soprano saxophonist Teddy Lasry wrote most of the material and Magma's best moments from these releases can be heard in 'Kobaïa' and 'Sckxyss' on the first album.
Towards the end of 1972, following a self immolating tour with a twenty voice choir, Magma ran out of funds and broke up. Cahen went on to found a new group (ZAO). Lasry settled down as a session musician. But the fanatical energy of Christian Vander could not be suppressed and he reformed Magma as a four piece, in which form, in January 1973 they completed a third album: 'Mekanïk Kommandöh', a compressed version of their five hour live set, which was eventually released sixteen years later... The first version had been rejected by Virgin Records as insufficiently commercial, three months later a slightly different line-up (now with Jannick Top on bass) re-recorded the album. This version of 'M.D.K.' was subsequently released by A&M records in December '73. Reports of Magma's live performances outstripped one's wildest imagination: their theatrics, which had been an integral part of their sets, were said to completely eclipse those of Bowie and Alice Cooper, and it was standard practise for a Magma concert to end in several hours of political debate between Vander and the audience. Needless to say, you had to see them.